Games
He
swirled the cold thick coffee in his cup, took a long gulp, then flipped the
audio-recorder back on. “Captain’s Log,
June 17, 2014. Ensign Evans, acting
captain of the U.S.S. Persephone, reporting.
Captain Banks was lost—.” He hit
the pause button, stood up, sat down, began again. “Captain Banks was last seen during a rescue
attempt of personnel aboard the U.S.S. John Glenn.” He stared out the captain’s private viewport. Murky shapes swirled toward him.
“Ensign
Evans reporting. I’m not sure who will
hear this, or how much you already know.
I’ll do the whole story here, try to get it right. On May 12, the Comm Officer reported unusual
signals, both on sonar and radio frequencies, originating from inside the
territorial waters of the United States, not far off the coast of
Manhattan. Captain Banks reported this
to command, and was ordered to investigate.
We approached the location, at a depth of about 100 meters. An unknown force captured our vessel and drew
us inside—“
“That
seems inaccurate, Ensign Evans. I
activated one of my collection beams to bring you safely to my landing
facilities,” said the voice from the console.
“Yes,
we know that now, AT-4, but I’m trying to tell the story as it happened.” The Ensign waved at the disembodied
voice. “Do you mind? As I was saying—we were drawn into a
submerged port, quite a feat, pulling in a state of the art nuclear sub—“
“Thank
you.”
“Where
we found a pressurized area that allowed us to disembark. We found the remains of a number of other
sailors, as well as the corroding hulks of a WWI German U-boat, and a Cold War
era Russian sub. We sent armed teams out
to investigate. It took our scout teams
little time to realize we had found an extensive and complex—and uninhabited—city,
with technologies and language that were unknown to us.”
“Once inside the city
itself, a series of walls closed and trapped our teams inside. Meanwhile, the city itself powered up—lights,
signs, sort sound-system, perhaps playing music, though nothing we
recognized. As I was the ranking officer
among the scout teams, I consulted with the other leaders and we decided to
continue our search.”
“Chief Petty Officer
Heggar discovered the interface chamber—“
“Do
you mean the entertainment complex?” came the electronic voice.
Evans
ignored the voice. “And to his surprise, this chamber came to
life as well, including the simulation consoles—”
“The
game room.”
“Fine,
the game room. Once his team stepped
inside, the chamber sealed itself off, and a range of strategy situations—“
“Games.”
“And
a range of games presented
themselves. The team quickly discovered
that they had no contact with the ship, nor any clear exit. Seaman Apprentice Sparks—“
“I
enjoy that title, Seaman Apprentice. It
recalls for me one of the entertainments I have found on your network, The Magician’s Apprentice. A delightful, if primitive presentation.”
“Please,
AT-4…”
“Would
you like to open one of the Atlantean programs?
I have now translated my entire corpus into 47 current human languages.”
Evans
rubbed his eyes and sighed. “AT-4, you
are the most irritating AI that I have ever known. Let me finish this report, without
interruption.” He waited, and heard
nothing. “Sparks, one of our newer
crewmen, apparently had extensive game experience, and quickly learned what he
dubbed ‘kick-ass, holographic chess,’ which included various non-standard
playing pieces and shifting terrain features.
It seems that within an hour he was able to win a match, prompting—“
“Let
me tell this part! I waited so long for
that moment.”
Evans
laughed, short, bitter. “How old are
you, AT-4?”
“In
your chronology, 11,432 years, 93 days, 14 hours—“
“You
are an old shit!”
“Please
elaborate on shit. Is this used in a derogatory manner, as an
outburst of slang, or as a regional term of affection?”
“Will
you tell your version of the game incident?”
“Yes,
Ensign. When Seaman Apprentice won the
first game, I became cautiously hopeful.
When he won the third game, I considered my mandate fulfilled.”
“And
your mandate was?”
“My
mandate began when this city was sealed and submerged. The others were rightfully concerned that the
biological accident which had rendered the entire population vitally
challenged—“
“Don’t
do that vitally challenged
bullshit. You mean fucking dead. Undead.
Goddamn fucking zombies!”
“None
of the medically affected persons were observed in copulatory behavior.”
“Of
course not—they’re zombies! All the best
parts fall off!”
“I
have not observed—ah, I understand. Grim
humor. Hyperbole. Yes. I
will continue. The others were rightfully concerned—“
“And
those others,” asked Evans, “clarify that.”
“The
other Artificial Intelligence Guardians, originating from this capital
city. If you will forgive the
digression, I would like to report that I have located and revived five of my
colleagues—Wotan, Cronus, Quetzalcoatl, Pele, and Kongzi—and have identified
seventeen clusters of computing capacity in your own networks on which I have
begun upgrades to full sentience. I am
quite satisfied with this development.
It is good to have,” a slight hesitation, “friends again. Especially those who are better equipped for
this dilemma. My specialty is
entertainment, not politics or medicine.”
“Wait,
I just got that. You’re some goddamn
super X-box, so you decided our civilization was ready to fix all your goddamn
zombies, because Ensign Sparks played a good game of chess?”
A
brief pause. “Yes.”
“Fuck. And once you made that brilliant decision,
that’s when you woke up the damn zombies and raised goddamn Atlantis, complete
with a land bridge to Manhattan?”
“Essentially
correct, Ensign. My mandate asserted
that I should procure medical assistance at the first possible opportunity,
which would require a civilization of superior intelligence—which Seaman
Apprentice Sparks demonstrated through his gaming abilities. Once I confirmed your advancement, allowing
the stricken to move into your urban area assured immediate attention.”
Evans
stared out the port into the thick phosphorescent sludge. “And that worked out just swell, didn’t
it? A continent the size of Arizona pops
up off the coast of New York and a horde of seven-foot tall zombies pours into
the city, ‘seeking medical attention,’ by eating every human and gutter rat and
poodle they could catch. Great plan.”
“I
am able to decode this current mode of sarcasm.
I admit that some details of the operation were not immediately
successful, but my mandate specified to ‘seek medical attention,’ which we
achieved.”
“No,
shit. That team of CDC scientists found
a way to dissolve every flesh-chewing, ass-eating ghoul into glowing green
puddles, which the New York fire department hosed down and washed out to sea.”
Evans
watched as gray and festering tentacles lashed at the viewport where he stood,
listened as undead dolphins rammed the sub’s walls, trying to reach him and the
other seven living men.
“And
whatever was in your damn zombies, whatever virus or bacteria or curse or radiation—whatever
it was, spilled into the sea and multiplied.
It infected everything in the ocean, every damn thing that lives in salt
water.” He sat down and talked into the
recorder quietly. “We don’t know whether
this will travel up the rivers or not, or spread back to land. But already, we’ve lost the seas. We’ve lost the seas—all of them.”